


Impactful Experiences and Collaborative Growth

by Nevanna



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Past Abuse, Past Mind Control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:14:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25212241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevanna/pseuds/Nevanna
Summary: Evan tells Naomi about the first time that he tried to escape from Moorland House.
Relationships: Naomi Herne/Evan Lukas
Comments: 11
Kudos: 39
Collections: The_Magnusquerade





	Impactful Experiences and Collaborative Growth

Naomi was in her own world, jamming her headphones in her ears, when she stepped out to find a woman she'd never seen before knocking at the door across the landing. She paused, and the woman stopped her knocking long enough to say, “Hello there. I was wondering if you could tell me who lives here?”

“It’s been empty since we moved in,” Naomi replied. “Only people who’ve been inside are the landlord and the exterminators.” 

The woman’s eyes brightened behind her glasses. “What were they exterminating?” She was about Naomi’s own age, dressed in a floaty, floral charity-shop dress with a pencil holding her coil of hair in place, reminiscent of the free-spirited literature and drama students who used to drift contentedly across the campus at Leeds while Naomi sat alone with her books. “Sorry, I should’ve introduced myself: I’m Sasha James, a researcher with the Magnus Institute.”

“Naomi.” The back of her neck was already prickling. “And I think they’d found some sort of ant colony under the floor.” Naomi didn’t add that she’d looked up the species of ant, later, and confirmed that it wasn’t native to Great Britain. Nor did she intend to acknowledge that it was a favorite of the Corruption vampires. And she certainly wouldn’t mention that she’d heard plenty about the Magnus Institute, as one of the token human friends in a group of magic users and wayward vampires. “Sorry if you…” The door to her own flat was still open behind her, and as if her thoughts had summoned him, she felt Evan’s hand settle between her shoulder blades. “...If you were looking for something more exciting,” she continued.

“Oh, if I were really looking for _excitement_ , I’d have stayed in my old department and risked getting pulled into another dimension through the nearest mirror,” Sasha said cheerfully. She clearly didn’t know that Evan was standing there and listening. “Thank you anyway!”

After she’d disappeared down the corridor, Naomi glanced back over her shoulder. Evan had shimmered back into visibility, looking unusually serious. When she asked if he needed to tell her anything, he shook his head and said, “Maybe another time.”

By the time she returned from her jog, he seemed ready to pretend that Sasha had never been there at all.

-

The fight started with a disagreement about how to spend their Saturday night, and exploded into accusations before either of them could stop themselves. 

“I said I wanted an evening in!” Naomi snapped, scrubbing vigorously at a saucepan instead of looking Evan in the face. “I never said I didn’t like your friends.” Not only had they shown him where and how to feed safely, but after nearly two years and more than a few awkward missteps, she sometimes felt less adrift in their company than she did among other humans.

“So why won’t you let me go and see them?” Evan demanded.

“ _Let_ you?” Naomi repeated. “ _You_ can still go to the party, can’t you? Do you think I’m going to shut you up in the house like–”

Evan’s jaw tightened, and he looked like she’d slapped him… or brandished a stake. “Go ahead, say it.” For… well, nearly the first time since they’d started living together, his eyes glimmered red. “‘Like my parents did,’ right?”

“I’m sorry.” Naomi reached out for him. “That was a shit thing for me to say.”

Before she could drop her hand, he caught it and kissed the knuckles. “Me, too. I should’ve remembered that when you say you want space, you mean it.”

They finished cleaning up from supper in silence, and Evan curled onto the sofa with his laptop and headphones. While Naomi still needed sleep, she knew that he might not join her in bed until long after she’d drifted off.

She was still turning this way and that, pulled more than once from the edge of sleep by a foot cramp or a stray worry, when the bedsprings squeaked and the cool skin of Evan’s arm brushed against hers. 

“Want to talk about it?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe.” The silence between them, however brief, was somehow louder than it had ever been. “It’s hard to know where to start.”

“Well, we’ve already got ‘I’m from a family of vampires who live in a spooky castle in the countryside’ out of the way,” Naomi pointed out.

Evan huffed out a noise that might have been a laugh, and played with her fingers while he seemed to search for words. “I tried to run away before,” he said at length. “When I was seventeen. Did I ever tell you that?”

“I don’t think so.” He’d told her about the ritual that had made him what he was, and enough about his childhood that she didn’t have to ask why the words she’d flung at him earlier that evening–and the ones that she’d held back–had stung. She’d never pressured him for more.

She didn’t pressure him now, and after a minute of silence, he found his words. “The only time I ever saw anyone besides my relatives and the staff was at the parties that the family hosted every couple of years. They invited all the vampires they knew, along with their… human friends.”

“Their thralls,” Naomi supplied quietly. The first time she’d learned what that meant, when one of Evan’s friends asked if she “belonged” to him, was the first time she’d thought about running away and forgetting that she’d ever met him.

“Yeah. Sometimes I tried to talk to them, but they always looked over my head and smiled, even when someone was drinking from them. I kept getting told that they were just part of the entertainment, but they were human, and _I_ was human, so I remember asking one of the other guests if I was going to turn out like them. She told me that my family had something much better in store for me…” His voice caught, and Naomi gave his hand a squeeze. “Anyway, when I got older, I learned that the Vast clan was always looking for new members, and I asked if I could leave with one of them. He thought that was hilarious, but he agreed.”

“I thought you didn’t want to be–” Naomi began.

“I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life–or unlife–following their rules,” Evan corrected her. “I don’t think I cared how I got out. Maybe I hoped I’d be able to get out of the Vast’s clutches and make it on my own. At least I’d get to see a bit of the outside world.” Another almost-laugh. “Can you tell that I didn’t think it through?”

Naomi nudged him gently with her elbow. “I don’t know where anyone would have gotten that idea.”

“It didn’t matter. Wasn’t like I got very far.” His voice darkened again. “I don’t know what made him haul me back to Moorland House, but I think my Uncle Peter threatened his fledglings.”

“Peter,” Naomi echoed. “He’s the one who was always out at sea, right?” On one of their first dates, she’d asked if he’d ever been to the seaside, and she was pretty sure that he’d mentioned a relative that spent most of his time on boats. 

“I still probably saw him more than I saw my parents. He was…” Evan paused, and Naomi laced their fingers together. “He and a friend of his, from the Beholding clan, were waiting in the _parlor_ –’cause that was the kind of house where I grew up–when the Fairchilds brought me back. The oldest of them made a joke, before he left, about throwing me off the roof–”

“That’s not a very funny joke.”

“ _He_ thought it was,” Evan said bitterly. “But Peter grabbed my shoulder and said, ‘Elias is here to help my nephew _internalize_ the consequences of his actions.’ Beholding vampires can read minds, and manipulate memories, and…”

“Can’t all vampires do that? The second thing, anyway?” It was part of how they kept their existence a secret, which made more sense than Naomi liked to think about sometimes.

Evan tightened his grip on her hand. “This was a lot more than blanking out a few minutes.” 

She reached out, and he leaned in, and when she began, “You don’t have to tell me the rest,” he shook his head, almost frantically, against her shoulder.

“His friend–Elias–he said, ‘Let’s have a look at you,’ and when his eyes stared into mine, I…” Evan hesitated again. “I started seeing things.”

“Seeing things in the room?”

Evan shook his head again. “It was like _I_ wasn’t even in the room anymore. Felt like I was on the Underground, surrounded by too many people; their heat, and their smells. And then a hunter was chasing me through an alley… and then the Corruption got hold of me, and there were bugs crawling on me, and _inside,_ eating away at...” Evan could barely get the words out. “I knew what it was like to be stabbed, beaten, dropped in the river, have my bones crushed, and _worse_ . He _made_ me know it. By the time I came back, or woke up, I’d gotten sick all over the carpet, and I was curled up next to it. Peter said, ‘You’re safer with us, aren’t you?’ and then I heard the door closing, and then I was alone.”

Naomi held him, rocked them back and forth a little, pressed her lips to his hair. She realized that her hands were bunched in the worn material of his Mechanisms T-shirt, because she couldn’t get them around Peter’s or his _friend’s_ necks. 

When Evan could speak again, he explained that years later, after he’d been turned, he’d found out that Elias Bouchard was in charge of the Magnus Institute. They collected information, stories, memories, probably; anything to do with humans’ knowledge of the supernatural. 

“I knew that place made some of you jumpy,” Naomi said. “When that researcher turned up, I thought you were worried that they’d try to study you if they got hold of you.”

“Yes and no,” Evan admitted. “But there was more to it than that.”

“Let me know if you want me to get hold of some petrol and a blowtorch,” she suggested. “We can stop at the Institute on the way out to your parents’ house. Make sure Peter’s there, first, and bring some marshmallows to roast over the flames.”

Evan managed another laugh, but when he spoke again, there was no humor in his voice. “The last thing I want is for you to catch their attention.”

“Is it time for the vampire-boyfriend speech again?” Naomi kissed his nose and used her most dramatic voice. “You’re going to tell me that your strange, dark, _twisted_ world is more _dangerous_ than I realize, and you couldn’t _bear_ it if the monsters _tore_ me away from you?”

“It is, and I couldn’t.”

Her arms tightened around him again. “Then I guess _this_ is the part where I say that I’m not going anywhere.” In the moment, she wanted, more than anything, for it to be true.

-

The next time the two of them were invited to a party, Naomi accepted. By then, night had started to fall much earlier, and Andrea’s back garden had plenty of space for a bonfire. Naomi watched the flames rise and fall while Evan mingled with the other guests. When he joined her again, she was feeding dried leaves and bits of kindling to the blaze. 

“Still hoping to roast those marshmallows?” he asked.

Enough time had passed since that frantic recount, and her half-joking offer, that at first she didn’t realize what he meant. “You already told me what you wanted,” she said at last.

“I never said I wasn’t grateful.” Evan sat down beside her. “I can imagine the wedding vows now: ‘I first knew that Naomi was the right one when she offered to commit arson for me…’”

Naomi giggled, something she’d _never_ done before they met. He half-smiled back. “Wait, are you joking about…” She caught her breath. “Wedding vows?”

“Do you want me to be serious?”

Naomi took his hand, brushing the spot on his wrist where a pulse should beat but didn’t. Evan still wasn’t human, and she still _was_ , at least for the time being. He’d been even more closed off from the world than she was, well before learning, in a single dreadful assault on his mind, how horrifying and dangerous it could be. And yet somehow their worlds had come together, and let them form something stronger than loneliness and terror. “Yes,” she said simply. “I do.”

**Author's Note:**

> My collaborators and I haven't entirely made up our minds about what happens to Evan in this AU, so for now, you can imagine a happy ending if you'd like.
> 
> A million thanks to [alliedwolves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alliedwolves/pseuds/alliedwolves) for their amazing beta reading job, and to everyone who encouraged this fic while it was in progress. <3


End file.
